"Their ends as various as the roads they takeIn journeying through life." There is no class of men to whom the memory turns with more complacency, or more frequently, than to those who "taught the young idea how to shoot." There may be a few tyrants of the birch, who never inspired a feeling save fear or hatred; yet their number is but few, and I would say that the schoolmaster is abroad... more...

CHAPTER I Gipsy ArrivesOnedank, wet, clammy afternoon at the beginning of October half a dozen of the boarders at Briarcroft Hall stood at the Juniors' sitting-room window, watching the umbrellas of the day girls disappear through the side gate. It had been drizzling since dinner-time, and the prospect outside was not a remarkably exhilarating one. The yellow leaves of the oak tree dripped slow... more...

As we go to press there is an uncertain feeling resulting from the departure of our cruiser for Cuban waters. It may provoke a crisis, or it may lead to a better knowledge of the true attitude of the administration toward Spain. Cuba continues to furnish us with its share of current history; the news is no more encouraging than that of previous weeks, however. In the East the situation has not... more...

                          DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS.                                 MARCH                               1663-1664 March 1st. Up and to the office, where we sat all the morning, and at noon to the 'Change, and after much business and meeting my uncle Wight, who told me how Mr. Maes had like to... more...

~I~ He painted trees as by some special divining instinct of their essential qualities. He understood them. He knew why in an oak forest, for instance, each individual was utterly distinct from its fellows, and why no two beeches in the whole world were alike. People asked him down to paint a favorite lime or silver birch, for he caught the individuality of a tree as some catch the individuality of a... more...

CHAPTER I. The huge London church was crowded in every part, and men had been standing in the aisles from the first moment that the service began. The preacher who had attracted so huge a crowd at two-thirty on a weekday afternoon, was one of the very youngest of the "coming men" of the English church. Tall, thin, with a magnificent head crowned by a mane of hair that was fast becoming... more...

Chapter I. — BRITANNIC MAJESTY AS PALADIN OF THE PRAGMATIC. Part, is now perhaps conceivable to readers. But as to the Second, the Germanic or Pragmatic Part,—articulate History, after much consideration, is content to renounce attempting these; feels that these will remain forever inconceivable to mankind in the now altered times. So small a gentleman; and he feels, dismally though with heroism,... more...

CHAPTER I. During the régime of Governor Monk, of Upper Canada, the military road was cut through the virgin pine from Lake Ontario to the waters leading into Georgian Bay. The clearings followed, then the homesteads, then the corners, where the country store and the smithy flourished in primitive dignity. The roadside hostelry soon had a place on the highway, and deep into its centre was Nancy... more...

A note about this story This story is from my collection, "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," published by Four Walls Eight Windows Press in September, 2003, ISBN 1568582862. I've released this story, along with five others, under the terms of a Creative Commons license that gives you, the reader, a bunch of rights that copyright normally reserves for me, the creator. I recently did the... more...

I. THE KING'S CHILDREN. There was once, in Christendom, a little kingdom where the people were pious and simple-hearted. In their simplicity they held for true many things at which people of great kingdoms smile. One of these things was what is called the "Golden Age." There was not a peasant in the villages, nor a citizen in the cities, who did not believe in the Golden Age. If they... more...